


Light into Gray

by Roselightfairy



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Depression, Established Relationship, M/M, Recklessness, Risk-taking, Sea-longing, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27582892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: "It's an art to live with pain... mix the light into gray." -Eddie VedderDear Gimli, with his craftsman’s heart and his dwarvish determination to find the problem, to fix it, to repair something broken to better than it was before.  “It cannot be helped, Gimli,” he says.  “That is the problem.  I cannot bear to stay, and yet I cannot bear to leave.  And there is so much warring within me that sometimes I feel I will die anyway just from holding it all inside.”Sometimes living with sea-longing is impossible to bear – and yet somehow Legolas and Gimli must find a way to bear it together.All other choices are unthinkable.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf
Comments: 17
Kudos: 66





	Light into Gray

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeHeerKonijn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeHeerKonijn/gifts).



> For DeHeerKonijn, based on conversations we’ve had about the intersections between sea-longing and depression – and the place where one might become the other. The backbone of this story is drawn directly from a conversation we had, and I really hope the writing lives up to your mental image. <3
> 
> I can’t stress enough that the story deals directly with suicidal themes, so please do what you need to take care of yourselves if this is a topic that triggers you. I did my very best with the topic, and I truly hope this doesn’t feel disrespectful of anyone’s experience.

Aragorn comes to fetch him in the smithy when it happens.

Gimli does not notice his arrival at first, so engrossed is he in discussion with Alma and a few of the smiths, but he notices after a moment that a hush has fallen over the remainder of the dwarves, the singing and chatting in Khuzdul faded as it always does when an outsider enters their domain. Their expressions, he sees when he looks up, are the even combination of resentment and awe that he has grown accustomed to over these days in Minas Tirith – the varying reactions to a king of men in a space he has loaned to them – but he cannot even catalogue those he will have to berate later once he takes in Aragorn’s face and the grim set of his mouth.

“Gimli,” is all he says. “If you would come with me.”

It might be a disaster elsewhere, might be some change in the plans for the city – but Aragorn would not be so grim about that, nor so reluctant to speak up before a group of dwarves who are all masters in their craft. There is only one thing that would bring that look to his face, and Gimli knows it, worry fizzing to life in his blood as he excuses himself from the knot of dwarves, handing over control to Alma, and hurries to the doorway. Legolas. Something has happened to Legolas.

“What is it?” he says as soon as the door is closed behind them. Aragorn is striding ahead already, true to his Ranger-name of old, and Gimli must trot to keep up with him. Any other time he would be resentful of the indignity, but now . . . “What is the matter with him? Is he – he is not” –

“He is safe,” Aragorn says, but his voice is tight. “For a particular definition of _safe_ , anyway.”

Gimli’s stomach clenches. “What happened?” he demands.

Aragorn sighs. “I think you had best see for yourself.”

And he will not say another word.

But Aragorn’s silence only encourages Gimli’s fretting, his imagination rising to fill all the spaces left by Aragorn’s reticence. What horrible thing might have befallen Legolas? An accident? – but Legolas and all the elves who accompanied him are so graceful that Gimli can hardly imagine such a thing. A worsening of sea-longing? He has been strange lately, distant and unwilling to speak up when prodded. Has he said something – done something now?

They turn on the road leading down, down to the lowest circle of the city closer to the temporary gates, and Gimli’s stomach begins to churn with a different set of fears. This is the poorer part of the city, and the most vulnerable to attacks from outside the walls. Aragorn has begun efforts to send money to the people here, and has placed extra guards on the gates until the new ones are forged – but these efforts take time, and still these streets are dangerous to walk alone. A new fear twists in Gimli’s gut at the mental image of Legolas bleeding out on a street corner, alone and unguarded, not to be found until –

Aragorn turns abruptly into a narrow alley wedged between two buildings. “Here we are,” he says, and Gimli looks up.

And there is Legolas huddled against the back of a building with his head resting on his knees, disheveled hair falling around his legs, his body a crunched defensive bundle. But he is far from alone. Three enormous men stand opposite him, faces sullen and bruised, held in place by Aragorn’s guards. A fourth large man sprawls unconscious across the alley; two other guards stand beside him with a stretcher.

“Legolas?” Gimli says, the word throbbing in his throat.

Legolas looks up.

Gimli has to restrain a gasp at the sight of him – his husband, the one love of his life – with his face a mangled mess, one eye swollen shut already, his lips fat and streaked with blood. His left cheek looks like ground raw meat, like it was dragged across the gravelly cobbles of the alley or the stucco surface of the building. His braids fall over his face, but he makes no effort to brush them away. When his eyes meet Gimli’s, they flicker and lower with something that looks like shame.

Gimli wants to reach for him, but cannot bring himself to move. “Legolas?” he says again, now a broken whisper – for the story is coming clear to him now, in ways he wishes it would not.

Aragorn clears his throat. “We will leave you two,” he says, nodding to the man on the ground, currently being heaved onto a stretcher. “Gentlemen, if you would come with me.”

They depart the alley, the restrained men still glaring back at Legolas, and leave Legolas and Gimli alone.

“Legolas.” Gimli has been lauded for his silver tongue, for his powerful words, and yet all his skill in speech fails him at the sight of his husband battered and bruised, at the way Legolas still refuses to meet his gaze. “Legolas, did you – did you pick a fight with these men?”

Legolas clasps his hands in front of him and watches himself wring his fingers as though it is the most fascinating sight in Middle-earth. “No,” he says, but his voice is raw from shouting.

“No,” Gimli repeats. “And yet you came to the First Circle by yourself, as you” – He breaks off. They both know how elves, and men who look like elves, are frequently made targets of violence by men like those Aragorn’s people have just escorted away, particularly in spaces like these. “So I can only conclude that you were looking for one, even if you did not throw the first blow.”

Legolas says nothing, and it is answer enough.

“Why?” says Gimli, his voice breaking. Legolas is fine – or, he does not seem to be seriously injured – but the fears that drove Gimli as they walked here have resurfaced and he cannot help picturing how much worse it could have been. What he could have found, if Aragorn’s men had not arrived in time, if Legolas had been attacked by more than the four – four! – men already here – “Why would you put yourself in danger this way?” His voice is rising, anger overtaking the fear and hurt. “Do you have some hitherto-unrevealed yearning for death?”

Legolas flinches, the tiniest motion, and opens his mouth – and then closes it again. His gaze moves from his fingers to the broken, uneven cobbles beneath his feet.

Gimli feels as though he has been punched in the stomach. All the breath rushes from his lungs and he nearly folds over himself with the force of an imagined blow. “Ah,” he says weakly, but the lump that rises in his throat chokes off any further possibility of speech.

He supposes it is just as well. He does not know what more he might have said.

* * *

They walk home in silence.

Silence between them has never been this painful; the few feet between them have never felt so far apart. Legolas knows Gimli is crying, would know it even if he could not hear the soft hitches in his breathing, and he wishes he could reach across the space to comfort his husband – but how can he do that, when he cannot even comfort himself?

Gimli is not one for comforting lies, and even were he Legolas has never had any skill in spinning them. Omission is the only deception he has ever been able to manage, and it has been agony even to keep that up in the last days – to smooth his face into an impassive mask despite the rising waves inside, scraping at his heart and eroding his soul, breaking him down into nothing until he felt he could do nothing else.

How can he explain it to Gimli the way he feels it – that sometimes the effort to keep choosing to stay, day after day, is simply too much? The only person who can stop his suffering is himself, but how can he do that, when he knows that all of his options are unbearable? On days like these, when he can smell salt on the wind and the call is so loud he can hear nothing else, staying is impossible – and yet the thought of sailing, of leaving Gimli and his friends and his home behind, is equally unthinkable. And yet both urges tug at him so fiercely that he fears he will be torn in two, and he cannot help wishing for the choice to be taken out of his hands.

This was not his first visit to the First Circle, but it was the first time he has come so close to what he secretly sought.

And he knows that this causes Gimli pain, but sometimes – sometimes, in his darkest moments – he cannot help but wonder if Gimli too might find some relief from having it decided for him. It cannot be easy for him, either: feeling the weight of this obligation, knowing that Legolas stays solely for him. Perhaps, if the choice were taken away from them –

He too would mourn, but he would recover. It would be easier, a clean cut, a simple sorrow. Not this heavy, diamond-edged knot of guilt, twisting and tearing them both up from within in this inextricable mess of slow torment.

Gimli would object to these thoughts, no doubt – but some days Legolas cannot think his way out of them.

Gimli’s tears stop when they are halfway home; Legolas can hear the change in his breathing. But he does not dare look over to see for fear of catching Gimli’s eye and seeing all his shame reflected there. For that shame is settling in now, the evidence of Gimli’s pain a stark reminder of all the reasons he should not have done this –

And yet it is not enough to take away the twisted logic of his decision.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gimli raise a hand to wipe his eyes, draw a sleeve across his nose in a display of manners he rarely allows himself to betray in public. The sight of it is like a battering ram against the flimsy scaffolding of Legolas’s composure, and he clenches his chest and throat against the tiny unhappy sound that would emerge.

He can feel his bruises now, the thin skin of his face tender and throbbing with his heartbeat, the sting across his right arm where one of the men landed a lucky slash with a knife. He was glad when he saw there were four, at first – for he is not so far gone as to surrender to death without a fight. Some part of him thought when Gimli found out, he might be comforted by knowing Legolas had given all his effort, had merely been outnumbered. And if he survived, at least he would be able to turn the men over to the city guards.

This is, he supposes, the best possible outcome.

They remain silent all the way back to their small house in the fourth circle of the city; Legolas follows Gimli as the dwarf turns up their few steps and unlocks the door. Silent as they close the door behind them and Gimli leads the way into the sitting room. Silent as Gimli fetches gauze and alcohol and bandages, and Legolas sits passive and allows him to tend to his wounds.

“Is it the sea-longing?” Gimli asks at last, dabbing at Legolas’s cheek and ignoring Legolas’s hiss through his teeth. “That drives you to do this?”

“What else?” His own voice is dull; Legolas fidgets with his hands in his lap. “I did not – sometimes there is too much inside me to bear it in silence.”

“And so instead of speaking to me about it, you decided to seek out a fight.” Gimli’s voice is tight; Legolas can hear the grief simmering within it, but it seems anger has pushed its way to the surface first. “Did you just want to fight, Legolas? Or were you hoping” – He swallows, but when he resumes speaking his voice is still a dry rasp – “hoping that you would not emerge from the fight with your life?”

“Not – intentionally,” Legolas says, but he knows his words are as weak as his voice; he can muster no real conviction. “Not – as deliberately as you make it sound. But” –

“But it is true, is it not?” Gimli’s hand against Legolas’s face is shaking – he whose hands are always so steady on his axe or at his craft or against Legolas’s own. “You would not be so reluctant if it were not.”

“I suppose so.” Legolas cannot raise his own voice above a whisper – he cannot explain this feeling, and yet it seems he must try. “It is – sometimes the thought of living every day with this choice is too much, Gimli. I cannot choose to leave and I cannot choose to stay, and sometimes – sometimes I find myself wishing the choice would be taken out of my hands.”

“So you would take it away from me, as well?” Gimli lets his hand fall away, and it does not matter that Legolas’s eyes are magnetized to his lap; he knows exactly how Gimli’s eyes look, burning with hurt and anger. “You would have me mourn for you?”

The words that rise up in Legolas are as cruel and unstoppable as the storm that rages in his soul; he cannot close his lips around them. “It would be easier for you to bear,” he finds himself saying, a truth he has never dared to form into words but has always known, the one consolation of this mortal love that tears him apart. “You are stronger than I am.”

The sound that escapes Gimli at those words is something Legolas has never heard – a grunt and a sob and a growl all at once. He jerks, his elbow colliding with the table and knocking over the bottle of cleaning alcohol. It hits the table with a clatter, its contents gushing out immediately in a flood so much less damaging than the words Legolas could not keep inside. The alcohol soaks the gauze on the table immediately and drips cold over the edge onto Legolas’s knees, but neither of them pays it any mind. Legolas looks up at last to find that Gimli is staring at him, half-risen out of his seat, his eyes glassy with some combination of horror and fury and deep, deep hurt.

“Gimli,” he starts, but Gimli holds up his hand.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice harsh enough to make Legolas flinch. “I can’t – I need to clear my head.” He pushes his chair back as though he cannot bear to be near Legolas any longer. “Can I trust that you will not go straight back to the First Circle before I return?”

That shame is rising up within Legolas again, cold in his throat and prickling hot behind his swollen cheeks and eyes. “Yes,” he whispers. “I mean, no – I mean, I will stay here. But will you” – How can he say it? He never thought he would have to ask this question of Gimli: _will you come back?_ He thought he wanted the choice made for him, but – not like this, never like this.

But Gimli seems to know what he is asking. “I will be back tonight,” he says. “I hope that you can say the same.”

And then he is gone, slamming the door behind him.

Legolas can only stare down at the mess of the table, the soggy gauze pads and fabric of their supply bag, the empty bottle in a quivering puddle of alcohol, the bloodstained gauze from his split lips. He should clean it, he knows, but he cannot bring himself to move.

Instead, for the first time in days, he buries his throbbing face in his hands and weeps.

* * *

Gimli stumbles through the streets of Minas Tirith with no destination in mind, only the thought that he must keep moving, must get as far away from his home – and from the love of his life – as he possibly can. If he is nowhere near Legolas or anything that reminds him of him, he does not have to think about his husband’s battered face, about those eyes that kept skating away from his own, about those cruel words –

Is that what Legolas thinks? That Gimli could better bear a separation, a mourning, than he could? That the weight of love and longing is not equal on both sides, that Gimli would rather _mourn his death_ than bid him farewell – that Gimli does not breathe with his breath, ache at his pain –

That his death would not kill something in Gimli, as well?

He clenches his teeth so he will not weep again, increases his pace until his breath is huffing and his cheeks are burning, and still he cannot escape it.

_It would be easier for you to bear._

He has known since the beginning that the sea-longing would ever be present in Legolas’s soul, that it would be a pain that lived alongside their love, an unwelcome third in their marriage, in their home. But he did not know –

He did not know it would hurt _this much_. That he would feel this powerless in the face of something he cannot hope to understand.

His feet have carried him to the forges again, he realizes – an instinctive path he walks every day. Perhaps work will distract him from this _thing_ resting between himself and Legolas, this hurt he can do nothing to ease.

Little enough time has passed since Aragorn first came to fetch him; the dwarves are still at work when he opens the door. They all look up at his entrance, but Alma alone leaves her work and rushes to meet him.

“Lord Gimli!” she says, with the kind of eager concern that would endear her to him at any other time, but which now feels like more emotion than he can bear. “Is all well? Are you” –

“All is well,” he says heavily, though he has never told such an egregious falsehood in his life. “Please, let us just return to work.”

* * *

Legolas has never known night in Minas Tirith to be this hot.

Nor has a distance of a few inches ever felt so impossible to cross. They lie in bed, each rigid on their backs and not touching, so far from their usual tangle of limbs, and the inches between them feel as solid a barrier as the gate Gimli’s people are forging. Gates, of course, can be opened – he must believe it; he _must_ – but the password to this one is nothing so simple as _mellon_ , not this time.

They have not spoken all evening. Gimli returned late and waved off the supper Legolas had prepared – and after his wordless refusal, Legolas himself could not stomach so much as a bite. It is still sitting untouched in the kitchen, likely attracting bugs – but it is always Gimli who fusses about such things, and with no word from him, Legolas cannot bring himself to care. They readied themselves for bed in an eerie simulation of their usual nightly routine – side by side, but without the soft touches or laughter that typically accompany their evening ablutions. And now they lie in bed, Gimli on the left and Legolas on the right as always, but not touching, and neither of them sleeps.

And it is _hot!_ There is no logic to it; Legolas has never felt this warm even with Gimli’s body wrapped around his, but the air itself feels thick as water and as impossible to draw into the lungs. He can hear Gimli’s breathing, shallow and wakeful, and wonders if he too finds it difficult to take a full breath.

They have been lying here for hours, watching the shadows shift as the moon moves, drowning in heat and silence.

Gimli shifts just a little, and Legolas’s breath catches – but no, he was only drawing his arms closer to his body, holding himself even more rigid than before. A drop of sweat beads on Legolas’s forehead and trickles into his hair.

Oh, he cannot bear this any longer – it is too much. He turns onto his side and slips, as quietly as he can, out of the blankets. Perhaps if he opens the window . . .

Behind him, a sound – a shift of the blankets and a quiet scoff. And then Gimli speaks for the first time in hours, his voice wrapped tight around restrained emotion. “Well? Do you mean to slip away again and finish what you started?”

Something ticks in Legolas’s chest and he stiffens, fighting back an instinctive surge of annoyance. “No,” he says, unable to entirely suppress the note of sullenness in his voice. He opens the window a crack, letting the night air rush in to cool his overheated face. Perhaps he should stay here, letting it freeze him over until he has found the numbness he craves. Perhaps he should freeze this moment just as they are, so that he never has to turn back and face the accusation and deserved anger in Gimli’s face.

But finally he can bear it no longer. He turns away from the window and slinks back to bed, but his body tenses up at the thought of lying back down. He perches on the edge of the bed instead, drawing his knees up to his chest and finally forcing himself to look at Gimli’s face.

Gimli’s eyes are gleaming in the moonlight, his arms folded tight over his chest, his expression unreadable. He says nothing, but only stares at Legolas until Legolas cannot keep silent any longer.

“I am sorry,” he offers, though he knows the words are weak and feeble.

“What are you sorry for?” Gimli is not, it seems, in a mood to make this easy. “I would know that before accepting your apology.”

Legolas’s shoulders draw up to his ears; again he fights down a surge of irritation. Gimli has the right to be angry with him; snapping back will only make things worse. “For frightening you,” he says. “And for wounding you with careless words.”

“Is that all?” Gimli sits up now, too. “You do not regret putting yourself in danger to begin with?”

“I would say so, if I thought you would believe me. But you do not wish for lies, do you?”

Gimli lets out a breath, cushioning a tiny grunt. “No,” he sighs. “However I wish the truth were different. But Legolas, you must be honest with me about this. I do not understand this urge that drives you, but – is there nothing we can do about it? No way to keep it from causing us both such pain?”

Legolas can only shrug helplessly. “I do not want to cause you pain, Gimli,” he says, hearing the plaintive note in his voice and despising it. “But it seems I do it anyway, however I try.” It is not the answer Gimli wants, he knows it, but – how can he give another when he can find nothing more to say? “I am sorry.”

“I know you do not want to hurt me,” says Gimli, and his eyes are brighter than before. “But I would have you want – more than that. I wish” – He swallows. “I wish you did not want to hurt _yourself_.”

Legolas’s own throat goes tight now. “That is not why I” – He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting a wave of tears. “I wish this were not the honest answer, but I – I hurt every day, Gimli.” There is something about saying it aloud, pinning it in words, that makes it starker than nebulous thought. Is it the heat in the room or his narrowing throat that makes it so difficult to breathe? “I act thus because I want the pain to _stop_.”

“And I want it to stop, too,” says Gimli. “But I wish there were some way – any other way. Legolas.” He reaches out, very tentatively lays a hand on Legolas’s knee. “I want to help you with this, but I cannot do that if you will not let me.”

The touch of Gimli’s hand, the earnest sincerity of his words, set loose another surge of feeling in Legolas’s chest – this time a strangled combination of laughter and tears. He knows – he _knows_. Dear Gimli, with his craftsman’s heart and his dwarvish determination to find the problem, to fix it, to repair something broken to better than it was before. “It cannot be helped, Gimli,” he says. “That is the problem. I cannot bear to stay, and yet I cannot bear to leave. And there is so much warring within me that sometimes I feel I will die anyway just from holding it all inside.” He has never tried to put these feelings into words before; something is happening to him even as he speaks of it – his own thoughts are coming clearer to him, those thoughts that were previously only a drive to _go_ , to _fight_ , and if he did not make it out alive, so much the better. “It must come out somehow, and sometimes this is all I can do.”

“And 'all you can do' is seek a fight you will not win?” Gimli withdraws his hand; the hot room feels suddenly cold in its absence. “Instead of telling me – or telling someone – instead of looking for a solution, you have given up on one already! And so you would die at the hands of some unknown brute and pass your grief on to me?” His voice softens. “You do hurt me when you hurt yourself, Legolas. I know you do not mean to, but you do. That is what this love means” – He presses a hand to his heart – “Your pain is my pain. And perhaps if I can better understand the source of yours, we can find a solution together.”

“There is no solution.” Legolas cannot decide if it is endearing or infuriating, this determination to _make it better_. “I cannot banish the sea-longing; I cannot sail, but neither can I stay. I make that choice every day, Gimli. And I can never stop making it unless it is taken out of my hands. That is my pain, and if my pain is yours, then it is yours as well.” Like earlier, something is rising up within him and he cannot stop his words – drawn from this honesty Gimli has at last compelled from him. “So perhaps having the choice taken away would be the best thing for both of us!”

Gimli straightens as though he has been slapped. “Do you think that?” he says angrily. “Do you think that is the only solution?”

Legolas’s head drops; he lacks the strength to hold it up any longer. “Sometimes,” he whispers.

“Very well.” Before Legolas's eyes, Gimli's demeanor changes from hurt to hard; he rises from bed, brusque now. “Then I will take the choice out of your hands. Get dressed.”

“What?” Legolas looks up again, shocked for a moment out of the fog of despair.

“Get dressed,” Gimli repeats, fumbling for a candle on the nightstand, “and pack a bag. We are going to the Havens.”

“What?” Legolas furrows his brow, blinking, trying to catch up with Gimli’s words. “But” –

“You say that the choice is what hurts you so,” says Gimli. He bites off each word at the end, but that does not disguise the tremble in his voice; his motions are tight and jerky. “Then I will choose for you. I am taking you to the Havens and putting you on a ship.”

“You are – what?” Ice creeps through Legolas's veins; he cannot believe he ever thought the room was too hot. Gimli has lit his candle and now he bustles around the room, opening drawers and pulling out Legolas’s clothing in brisk, economical motions just a step shy of frantic. Legolas too feels frantic, trapped and restless at the same time and unable to understand what is happening before his eyes. “You cannot – but” –

“I am choosing for you,” says Gimli. He refuses to look over at Legolas, but his voice breaks again, his breath wet with tears. “If you seek death in an effort to have the choice made for you, I will give us both that ease you claim to seek.” He lets out a short, clipped sob, as abrupt as the motions of his hands and body. “If sailing is the only way to prevent you from seeking your own death, then we are leaving for the Havens tonight.”

“You would” – Legolas’s blood is rushing in his ears; he stares up at Gimli – Gimli who once begged him not to go; who embraces him so tightly every time he brings up the sea as though to fight the tide itself; who holds him here more firmly than any anchor – “You would let me go? It would be so easy?” For all that he claimed to want this, it feels so different now – he has spent so long fighting the sea-longing that he cannot fathom that it might be so easy to simply give in. Cannot fathom that Gimli might be the one to give in for him.

Gimli turns back to the bed and reaches out to take Legolas’s hands. The tear tracks on his face gleam in the candlelight. “It is the hardest thing in the world, Legolas,” he says softly. “I will mourn you for the rest of my life. But if the choice is between never seeing you again but knowing you are well and” – his face crumples – “wondering if I will find you bleeding out in an alley” – his shoulders bow as he begins to weep in earnest; the next words are nearly incoherent through his tears – “I would choose this a thousand times.”

Something crumbles inside Legolas at his words, at his tears – at the sight of his proud, strong husband huddled in a ball on their bed, sobbing with abandon into his hands – and before he knows it he is reaching out, eyes flooding with his own tears, drawing Gimli against him. “No,” he sobs out, and he clutches Gimli close, pressing his face into Gimli’s hair and ignoring the sting of his abraded cheek. “No, no, no, I” – he cannot remember any other words, can only repeat, “no, no, no,” again and again.

“No?” croaks Gimli at last, his voice stuffed and hoarse. “No, you do not want to go?”

Legolas shakes his head, his fingers clawing into Gimli’s shoulder blades through his nightshirt. Surely there will be bruises there tomorrow. “No,” he repeats.

“What do we do, then, Legolas?” Gimli pulls back from him just a bit, just enough that they can gaze at one another, one tear-soaked face to another. “I meant what I said. I cannot bear to live each day wondering if it will be the last one I see you. I cannot bear to wonder every time I come home if you will be here waiting for me.”

“I know.” So they are back at the beginning again, staring down this unfixable problem with the desperate need for _something_ to change. “I know, but – I cannot promise not to feel this way, Gimli. I would not lie to you.”

“Is that a promise you can keep, then? Not to lie to me?” Gimli raises a hand to Legolas’s uninjured cheek, sweeping the pad of his finger along Legolas’s cheekbone and collecting the salt of his tears. Legolas blinks slowly, letting his wet eyelashes kiss Gimli’s fingertip. “I do not ask you to make promises about your own feelings; I would not bind you to such a vow. But can you promise to tell me when you next feel that it hurts too much to bear it alone? Give me the chance to escort you to the Havens, should that be needed – or at least to join you in your risk-seeking, so you will not be alone? I cannot ask you not to hurt me, but will you promise not to surprise me?”

It cannot be as simple as this – such a small promise cannot repair that vast broken thing in Legolas’s soul, those jagged edges scraping both of their hearts rawer and bloodier than the side of Legolas’s face. But it can be a start, perhaps – something small to cling to. For it seems that – at least now, at least sometimes – Legolas does not want the choice taken away from him after all.

“Yes,” he whispers, and he pulls Gimli close again as another wave breaks over him, a sob heaving in his chest. “Yes, I promise.”

And they hold one another close and cry, sealing the promise in tears as salty as the sea.


End file.
